Response to Pierre’s Challenge of “Stella’s Strategic Competencies || Blog 8.1: D’Oh!

Hi Pierre,

I appreciate your response to my post, as found here.

I believe there are two main factors to the growth in my school: the housing boom and the new curriculum. The year before these two things happened, we were working on a bare bones budget and wondering how long we could hold out. When the demand in Vancouver for affordable single detached dwellings went through the roof a few years back, many people moved further out to the eastern Greater Vancouver Regional District. My school had just sold land from our property to be developed, and so there was a windfall to pay off debts. The new housing starts also increased at that time, so the population pool who might be interested in Christian education increased. At the same time, many parents became increasingly worried about the changes in the new curriculum and sought a more predictable and “safe haven” in private education. It also happened at the same time we had hired a development coordinator to improve our brand and create a stronger connection to our  surrounding community.

It was a perfect storm for increased enrolment!

I feel humbled and honoured to have been called to lead in my community for a time such as this. Jesus’ perfect timing in my life brought me to the TWU MAL program, and every course has brought learning at the exact time I needed it for my school. Even taking LDRS 501, I was worried I would be too busy and overwhelmed with my new position to handle the course load. Yet, the amazing part is I have been enlightened at each new step by the learnings from the course! So yes, I’m too busy with it all (report cards this week on top of it all!) but I’m NOT overwhelmed because I have been encouraged to be strategic and to question everything. Thank you for your vote of confidence that I will be able to handle the challenges of rapid growth!

Thank you also for challenging me to look again at Galbraith (2014). You wrote “What are the different teams within your organization? Does each teacher work on his or her own? Do teachers of different subjects work together to determine the learning plans? What does the administration do concerning the teachers?” (Florendo, 2018). In my school, we have two teams: elementary team (K-7), lead by the Assistant Principal, and the high school team (8-12), led by the Vice Principal. The elementary team has one teacher per grade, along with a shared PE and music teacher. In the high school, we have smaller teams, such as the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) team and the HUM (humanities) team. The HUM team might collaborate on how to integrate competencies within each grade level so a student will have developed a required set before graduating. There is also a special education team, composed of several education assistants (EAs), teacher assistants (TAs), and the special education coordinator. The EAs may be assigned to one child or work within a whole classroom, depending on the level of need. There is also an International Student Program, led by a coordinator, which has an ELL teacher and a Homestay Coordinator.

As I look at Figure 1.1 in Galbraith (2014) again, it would seem the “Pooled” structure would be the way an outsider might look at our school. “Other than sharing resources, these field units … perform their work completely separate” (Galbraith, 2014, p. 9). On one hand, as teachers, we are responsible for the domain of our classroom. Much of the day is composed of separate classes, beside one another, yet a completely different set of students, parents, teacher (s), etc. Yet there are pooled resources of synchronized recesses, administration support, special education support, etc.

However, what confuses me is that we do not truly “perform work completely separately” (Galbraith, 2014, p. 9). Maybe this is where your idea of a team (complex) would come in. In the reference you provided, they state “When care is not well coordinated, errors, omissions, and harms occur” (Cholette, Beasley, Abdiwahab, & Taplin, 2017). They also purport “Team researchers call this work interdependent and recognize that there is some variation in the degree to which the interaction and coordination of team members is required to complete the task.” I suppose, according to this definition of interdependence, that the senior administration team is the one doing the coordinating, thus we would be better represented in the team (complex) model.

You said “They use the example of creating a care plan for a patient with multiple chronic conditions; all the team members need to collaborate to make a comprehensive plan. Would this type of interdependence apply to a student with special circumstances?” (Florendo, 2018). Yes, this describes the process in place for the special education coordinator, who creates an Individualized Education Plan with a school-based team as well as a team of external supports for the student. The senior administrative team would also execute a procedure such as this for a student who is exhibiting worrisome behaviors by activating a Violent Threat Risk Assessment protocol and gathering a team.

From my explanation, maybe you could respond by explaining if my thinking falls into the description you gave from Figure 1.1 and Cholette et al. (2017)?

You also asked “If you could start from scratch, to design an education system based on your ideas, would you find this book more useful? Do you think this thought experiment would help you come up with possible innovation for your current system?” (Florendo, 2018). I appreciate your gentle provocation to go further than my frustration with the Galbraith (2014) text. Upon second perusal (don’t laugh at this next part), I now notice the title is “Designing Organizations,” so then the lens is to explore the possible ways an organization can be put together. Not an “aha!” moment on my end, but more of a “D’Oh!” I must admit to thinking some gleaming nugget of truth was going to jump out at me in this book, so because there was no epiphany, I must not be clicking in. Now I see it more like “Here are twenty pieces of lego… we can put them together like this, or like this, or like this. If you do this, then here are the implications. However, if you do that, you might end up with this.”  With this new framework, there might just be a new innovative way to look at my current system.  It’s worth a second look. THANK YOU!

Stella

References:

Chollette, V., Beasley, D. D., Abdiwahab, E., & Taplin, S. (2017). Health information systems approach to managing task interdependence in cancer care teams. Journal of Oncology Practice, 13(3), 154–156. https://doi.org/10.1200/jop.2016.020156

Florendo, P. (2018). Response to Stella’s strategic competencies || Blog 8.1: Interdependence.  Retrieved November 23, 2018, from https://create.twu.ca/pierreflorendo/2018/11/23/response-to-stellas-strategic-competencies-blog-8-1-interdependence/

Galbraith, J. R. (2014). Designing organizations: Strategy, structure, and process at the business unit and enterprise levels.